


with great power

by hellodeer



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spider-Man Fusion, College/University Life, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-26 21:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14410875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodeer/pseuds/hellodeer
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki: figure skater by day, Spiderman by night.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on avoidacado's [spider yuuri](https://twitter.com/avoidacado/status/934513470279647233) drawings!!

It starts because Yuuri is stressed.

Most of the shitty things in Yuuri’s life start because he’s an anxious-ridden, prone-to-overeating mess of stress most of the time. Like when he can’t seem to land his jumps all week, and the music Ciao Ciao chose is just not connecting, and he’s afraid he’ll lose his scholarship and be deported or worse, crash and burn at a competition right in front of Viktor Nikiforov, bringing shame to his parents and his country— so he snaps, sometimes. At Phichit, at classmates, at the perfectly nice people at the campus coffee shop who are just doing their job. He feels immediately guilty afterwards, when he realizes the words that have left him and that everybody at the café is looking at him open-mouthed, shocked and uncomfortable. 

He leaves without even getting his latte.

“That’s the third one in less than two weeks, Yuuri,” Phichit sighs. He even puts his phone screen-down on the mattress to frown at Yuuri, worry and upset in his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to see a sports psychiatrist?”

Yuuri almost scoffs. He hasn’t told Phichit, but he did see a sports psychiatrist his first and second years of college, before Phichit came into his life. The talks and the anxiety medication helped a little in the off-season, but during competitions Yuuri was still a hot mess. After a couple of years, though, the meds just made him feel sluggish and numb and like he was cheating somehow. Plus, he’s Japanese. 

“I’m sure,” he says. A poster of Viktor Nikiforov winks at him from the wall. “It’s just that midterms are right before Skate America, so I have a lot going on.”

“Okay,” Phichit continues to frown. His phone vibrates, but he doesn’t pick it up. “What do you do to relax?”

“Skating,” is the immediate answer.

Phichit rolls his eyes.

“Besides skating, Yuuri.”

Yuuri thinks long and hard. Phichit’s phone vibrates again, and this times he does pick it up and unlocks the screen.

“There’s… nothing,” Yuuri finally says. The sad thing is, it’s true. He used to play the keyboard when he was younger, but that soon got thrown aside the more time he spent at the rink. There’s dancing, actually, but his dance crew is back on campus, more than one hour away by train.

“You need to find something, Yuuri,” says Phichit, briefly looking up from tapping on his phone. “Take your mind off stuff, you know?”

“Right,” Yuuri says.

That night, he lies awake staring at the ceiling. Phichit’s hamsters play on their wheels, the squick squick squick resonating in the room. Yuuri feels like he’s suffocating, because on top of his first Grand Prix assignment of the season happening in a _month_ , he also has a fuckton of exams. Of the ten Economics in Modern-day Middle East lectures, he’s missed four. He needs to write papers for two of his classes—

He hasn’t landed a quad Salchow in two weeks—

The hamsters won’t quit, squick squick squick—

His scholarship only covers tuition, his parents have to pay for rent and coaching and other expenses—

He’ll need to look for another coffee shop on campus, _again_ —

Squick squick squick—

One of his professors is known for extremely difficult exams, and Yuuri has to look up half of what the words on the readings even _mean_ —

He’ll be a disaster at Skate America and NHK Trophy and never make it to the Grand Prix Final—

Squick—

His mom will cry and his dad will disown him and his sister will never look at him again and even his dog will reject him—

God he misses his dog—

He just wants to go home and eat some katsudon—

But he won’t be able to show his face again, he’ll be so embarrassed—

Squick—

He’s no good, just no good, he’ll never be more than a dime-a-dozen skater—

_Squick!_

He gets up.

His and Phichit’s apartment is just two streets away from the rink. Tim, the night security guard, knows him so well by now he doesn’t even blink when Yuuri shows up, asking to be let in; last year, Yuuri was invited to spend Christmas with Tim’s family. He actually went, even bought gifts for Tim’s twin daughters.

So he skates. It does relax him to be on the rink like this, the lights low, drawing figure eights. It’s the first thing he was taught back in Hasetsu by his first, old-school coach. He used to hate it, but now it reminds him of a time when skating was fun and new, and didn’t bring with it this huge dark wave of fear and disappointment.

He stays on the rink for hours. He moves from figure eights to his short program step sequence, then the jumps, which he lands more often than not. His free program choreography is one his favorites he’s ever done, and he’s about to being when—

“Argh!” he screams, a piercing kind of pain on his left calf. Something skitters on the ice and Yuuri instinctively steps on it.

When he kneels down to look, it’s a spider, big and red and black, some of its legs twitching miserably.

“I’m so sorry,” Yuuri says, sadness gripping at his heart. He’s never liked hurting bugs, no matter how gross.

He checks his leg next. There are two big puncturing marks that pierce through the sock. When he pulls the wool down, there are two holes on his calf with blood dripping from them, the area already swollen and greenish-yellow. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt.

He looks at the spider again. It’s not like any he’s ever seen before; what if it’s poisonous?

“Shit,” Yuuri tells himself, dread sinking into his stomach. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He gathers the spider corpse quickly into his gloved hands. Its blood, a strange goo that looks more like melted plastic, forms a sticky line from to ice to Yuuri’s hands.

“Gross,” he says.

He leaves the rink, spider rolled up in his ruined sock, makes a quick stop by the apartment to grab his books, wallet and a surgical mask. Phichit is still sleeping and, finally, so are the hamsters.

Twenty minutes later finds Yuuri on the 6AM train to Ann Harbor, mask on and spider-sock secured inside a Tupperware. One of his pole dancing class friends is a Biology major who works on the university lab; he’ll take the spider to her and pray it’s not poisonous, and if it is, pray there is an antidote, and if there isn’t, pray for a swift death.

He starts to feel lightheaded halfway through the ride. _That’s it_ , Yuuri thinks. _I’m dying_. He feels strangely calm about it. A couple of minutes later, though, the lightheadedness passes, which makes him even more worried.

Yuuri is so anxious and scared he can’t make his legs work and ends up missing his stop. He only gets off the train two stops later and makes it to campus by 7:30. The walk to the lab is spent thinking about his funeral. When he gets there, he finds that he needs access to enter the building, plus he has no idea where Vanessa works. He takes off his mask and calls her.

“Hi, Yuuri!” she answers cheerfully after three rings. Yuuri flinches; her voice sounds so loud and close. He fumbles with the volume button on his phone and frowns to see it’s only at four bars.

“Hi, Vanessa,” he says. The chilly morning air makes his breath materialize in front of him. He hugs himself one-armed. “Sorry for calling so early.”

“It’s no problem,” she hums. “So, what’s up?”

“I’m outside,” he says, figuring that _A weird spider bit me and I might be dying, please help me_ is not something you should say over the phone. “Can you let me in?”

A couple of minutes later Yuuri is inside the building, on his way to the third floor where Vanessa’s lab actually is.

“It’s not _my_ lab, though,” she’s saying, guiding Yuuri through a maze of a corridor with lots of doors, funny sounds and smells. “I work in a team of five, plus two professors, but I’m mostly alone in the mornings. I like to get my share done first so I can go home early to Ketty.”

She chats on and on, but Yuuri doesn’t really hear her, busy feeling the weight of the Tupperware inside his backpack. How bizarre that something as small as a spider can be so deadly, and soon he’ll be gone, and—

“Here we are,” Vanessa opens a door and lets Yuuri inside a small room with a couple of tables overflowing with stacks of paper and a few microscopes. There is also a mini fridge and a big white board filled with words Yuuri can’t read on one of the walls. “So, again, what’s up?”

“Right,” he says. He takes his backpack off, grabs the Tupperware from inside and hands it to Vanessa. She takes it with a raised eyebrow.

“What’s this?” She takes it to one of the tables and opens it. Then her face twists in disgust. “Ew, Yuuri, gross!”

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his cheek above the mask. “It’s what’s inside the sock. You might— might want to use gloves.”

She continues to frown at him, but grabs a pair of white plastic gloves and puts them one. She carefully unrolls the sock.

“It better not be another—” she gasps suddenly, so loud Yuuri covers his ears. “What _is_ this?”

She has the spider on the table now. It’s still big and black and red, lying motionless with white goo coming from its head. Yuuri shudders at the sight.

“It bit me earlier,” he tells Vanessa. “Do you know what species it is? Is it poisonous?”

“Where did it bite you?” she asks, fingers probing the spider here and there.

“My leg.”

“No, I mean where _were_ you when it bit you?”

“The rink.”

“How odd!” Vanessa exclaims excitedly. “What was it doing at your rink, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says. He feels hungry and tired and so, so scared. He just wants to get this over with, so he asks “Is it poisonous? Should I go to the hospital?”

Vanessa bites her lip and finally turns from the spider to look at him.

“I don’t know, Yuuri,” she shakes her head. “I’ve never seen this species before. It could be poisonous, it could not be. How long has it been since it bit you?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri checks his phone. It’s 8:15. “Almost three hours?”

“And you’ve felt nothing during that time? Muscle pain, shortness of breathe?”

“Just a little lightheadedness,” he says. She moves closer and kneels down.

“Show me the bite.”

So Yuuri rolls up his pants up to his knee. Where his calf was swollen and bruised, where there were puncturing marks not three hours ago, now there’s— nothing.

“Are you sure this is the right leg?” Vanessa asks, frowning at him.

“Yeah,” Yuuri frowns too. “It was my left leg. But—”

He rolls up his right pant leg. Also nothing.

“This— what? How?”

“What?” Vanessa shakes her head.

Yuuri realizes he asked the questions in Japanese, so surprised and freaked out he was.

“Nothing,” he tells her. He doesn’t think he’s capable of saying anything else right now.

“Look, Yuuri,” says Vanessa, getting up and going to the spider again. “I need to look it up. I’ll hit up a few books, ask my professors — we have an insect specialist on campus, maybe she can help. Come back later at like four, okay?”

Her words barely register, but Yuuri nods his head anyway. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, waving a hand dismissively in his direction. And, without taking her eyes off of the spider, adds “If it had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

So Yuuri goes to his 8:30 class. He talks through campus in a daze, unsure of — everything. Is his mind playing tricks on him? The spider was real. He was bitten by it, he saw the bite. How can it just disappear? Is he so stressed from the pressure of school and skating that he’s starting to lose his mind? Does he need to go back on meds?

He barely makes it to Economics in Modern-day Middle East, worried that he should talk to Celestino about a possible situation first. But eventually the guilty over missing another class wins over the guilty of keeping secrets from his coach, so he enters the classroom and finds a seat in the middle of the room.

Yuuri takes out his laptop and opens a blank Word document, but he can’t make out anything that’s written on the board. He thinks it’s just the nerves and anxiety making it difficult to focus on the western words, their letters and shapes tiring after a long, long day — it’s barely 9AM — but then he realizes his vision is actually blurry. He takes off his glasses, but they’re not dirty. And the weirdest thing of all: he looks at the board again, no glasses this time, and he can see everything perfectly.

The day only gets stranger after that.

At the cafeteria during lunch, the boy in front of Yuuri trips and drops his tray, except it never hits the ground because Yuuri grabs it one-handed, reflexes sharp and fast. He runs to the library because he’s late, and when he pauses to catch his breath he leans his hand against a wall and it _sticks_.

But it’s during the group study meet-up that things actually get out of control. Thirty minutes in and he’s fine, if a little distracted, trying his best to contribute to the discussion because he can’t bear the thought of these people failing Culture and Life in 18th Century America because of him. Then he gets a headache. He tries to ignore it at first, gritting his teeth and willing it to go away, but the pain at the base of his skull builds and builds until he can’t take it anymore. He gets up and closes his laptop lid with a _bang!_

Everyone on the table turns to stare at him.

“Sorry,” he rushes to say, opening the laptop again and pushing it towards the person closest to him. “Just— keep taking notes, I’ll be right back, I just have to—”

He just has to _go_.

“Password is viktornikiforov!” he shouts on his way out the door, to multiple _shh!_ s. “With a k!”

It’s an urge. He doesn’t know where it comes from, or even what it is. But he knows he needs to act, and he needs to do it _now_ , the feeling stronger than anything he’s ever felt.

He goes around the library, coming off an alley just behind it, and there it is: in the dark, small space, he can see a man, small but strong, trapping a girl between the wall and his body. He’s seen both of the around campus before; they’re students, so he should call the campus police or something but he just _goes_.

He launches at the man and punches him awkwardly on the back.

“What the hell?” the guy turns around, his face in a deep frown. Over his shoulder Yuuri can see the girl’s eyes, wide and scared.

He doesn’t really think about it. He doesn’t think about anything, really; he just punches the guy in the face. The man goes down, knocked out probably more from getting caught off-guard than from the strength of Yuuri’s fist.

Yuuri breathes heavily, mind completely blank as he looks at the slumped form on the ground. Then he lifts his eyes to find the girl staring at him.

“Thank you,” she manages to say. She looks about as shocked as Yuuri feels. “Who _are_ you?”

Yuuri runs away.

Shit. What was he thinking? Is he actually losing his mind? He’s just _punched_ somebody. In the _face_. What if the guy had punched him back and broke his nose? Worse, broke his glasses? _Worse_ , what if the guy recognizes him and sues him and gets him _deported_?

It’s hard to breathe through the panic so Yuuri takes off the mask, crumpling it in his fist. Shit, shit, _fuck_. Yuuri’s never gotten into a fight in his life, and now he’s going around punching people. This is the shittiest day of his life, even worse than the time he tripped on the ice in front of Viktor Nikiforov when he was 16 or the time he had a stomach bug but insisted on competing anyway and ended fifth out of six. All because of that stupid fucking _spider_ —

“Yuuri!”

He stops, breathing heavily as he bends down, hands on his knees, and throws up on his shoes.

“Yuuri, oh my God!”

He blinks. It’s hard to see through the tears in his eyes and the static in his head, but there’s a blur that looks like Vanessa running towards him. He raises his head to find he’s come to a stop in front of the lab building.

“Are you okay?” she asks, hands fussing over his shoulders, his arms, his face. “Should I call an ambulance? Phichit? Ketty?”

“It was poisonous, wasn’t it?” he coughs out. “It’s the spider poison making me crazy.”

Vanessa shakes her head, her beautiful dark curls swinging with the movement. She smells like cigarette smoke and pistachio. Yuuri has no idea how he’s able to tell.

“It wasn’t a poisonous spider, Yuuri,” she says. She sounds upset. “Actually that species is not in any of my books. That’s what I was going to tell you when you came back. I’m at a complete loss here.”

“ _Chikushou_ ,” Yuuri whispers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: one use of the n word, mild gun violence

Phichit finds out because he finds Yuuri having a breakdown in the kitchen.

In the week since he’s been bitten, Yuuri’s life has taken a turn from only slightly confusing at times - Junior Grand Prix Final 2011, people wanted to take pictures with _him_ when Viktor Nikiforov was _right there_ \- to twenty-four seven _chaos_. 

He’s had to buy fake glasses because he suddenly doesn’t need prescription ones anymore, and he can’t just stop wearing glasses because then people will ask and he won’t know what to say. He feels guilty, of course, basically lying to everyone anyway, but it was the only thing he could think of. He also gets headaches every day, at random times and he can stick to walls now. It says something about his life that this is the thing that worries him the least.

It’s all because of the spider, he and Vanessa have figured out. She still doesn’t know what kind of spider it is, or where it comes from, and every day Yuuri loses a little bit of hope of figuring it out. Vanessa has been discreetly asking her professors and even sending e-mails to other universities and researchers, asking them about rare spiders.

“Maybe it’s a new species,” she had said yesterday, a deep frown on her face as she waved her fork around. The loud noises of the cafeteria and the permanent smell of rotten egg made Yuuri want to puke his dinner right out. “Not categorized yet.”

That didn’t help his despair at all.

So on Friday, Yuuri gets home from the rink to a quiet apartment. Phichit stayed behind to vlog or something like that, so Yuuri sets about preparing their meal. He’s boiling water for the rice when something _plops!_ into the pot, splashing warm water on his arm.

“Ugh,” Yuuri tells the room at large. He looks down at his left wrist. White goo leaks from a hole close to his hand. 

Yuuri slides down the oven until he’s sitting on the floor and begins to promptly freak out.

He’s in that same position when Phichit walks in maybe half an hour later. Yuuri doesn’t know. Could have been a minute, could have been ten days; there’s white goo like that spider’s blood coming out of him. He just doesn’t _know_ anymore.

“Why are you sitting on the dirty floor, Yuuri?” Phichit asks, setting down his training bag.

“It’s not dirty,” is all Yuuri manages to say. “I cleaned it last night.”

Phichit just frowns at him. It’s his you-are-completely-missing-the-point frown. Yuuri doesn’t know how he knows, but with Phichit, he can always tell.

“Okay,” he comes closer and turns off the burner — Yuuri had completely forgotten about the water —, then sits down next to Yuuri. “Why are you sitting on the clean floor, then?”

Yuuri wordlessly holds out his arm.

“Did you hurt your—” Phichit says something in Thai then. Yuuri supposes it means something along the lines of _holy shit_ or _freak_. “What happened? I’m gonna call 911!”

“Please, don’t,” Yuuri whispers. His health insurance barely covers the ambulance ride.

“You burned yourself pretty bad, Yuuri!” Phichit is saying, hands trembling as he reaches for his phone.

Yuuri shakes his head.

“It’s a not burn,” he says. He squeezes his arm: the goo comes out faster and thicker. It doesn’t hurt at all. “It’s coming from inside me.”

“What is _that_?” Phichit asks, torn between disgust and a curiosity that has him almost vibrating.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says, and tells him about the spider, the bite, everything.

“Oh,” Phichit blinks when Yuuri is finished. “Well.”

Phichit turns, pressing his back to the oven. Yuuri does the same. They sit in silence for quite some time, staring at the wall ahead.

“Spider silk,” Phichit blurts out. Something on Yuuri’s mind starts going on high alert, not liking the sound of that at all. “Yuuri, do you think— maybe you’re making a web?”

Yuuri groans.

“Is that even scientifically possible?” he asks.

“Well,” says Vanessa, frowning deeply into her rice. Yuuri did manage to cook it after getting up and cleaning and bandaging his wrists as best as he could. Then Phichit suggested they call Vanessa and Ketty over to discuss Yuuri’s situation, as he put it, gesturing largely with his hand; so that’s what they did. “No.”

“You don’t turn into a spider if you get bitten by a spider,” Ketty says.

“Exactly,” Vanessa nods along.

“Usually, you die.”

Vanessa elbows Ketty in the ribs. Yuuri barely notices, because there’s only so much his mind can process besides _I might be turning into a spider_.

“Okay, but,” Phichit points to him with his chopsticks. “That’s clearly what’s happening to Yuuri here.”

“I don’t want to turn into a spider,” Yuuri hears himself say.

“You’re not going to turn into a spider,” Vanessa says, firm. “That’s _impossible_.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Yuuri,” Phichit says. He’s blushing, sheepish. “I meant, I think you’re getting some, er, spider attributes?”

“Spider attributes,” Yuuri frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“Sticking to walls, the silk thing,” he says. “Have you been craving bugs?”

Yuuri almost rolls his eyes.

“The silk thing is interesting, from a scientific point of view,” Vanessa says. “Can I collect samples?”

“Sure,” Yuuri says, because this is his life now, so why not.

“The headaches, though,” says Ketty. Her eyes are wide and sparkling. The last time she had that look on her face, Yuuri ended up at a metal concert, in a mosh pit, where someone cracked his glasses. “You can sense when people are in danger, right?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says slowly. “I guess that’s it.”

“So maybe,” she’s so excited she slides to the edge of her chair. Yuuri can feel and hear her feet tapping under the table. “You should use your spider attributes to _save people_.”

“Oh no,” is Yuuri’s immediate response.

“Why not?”

“It will get me _deported_ ,” he says urgently. He’s already on thin ice here, punching people in the face and getting atributes that would have the CDC coming for him. The last thing he wants to do is add _creepy weirdo that saves people without their consent_ to that list.

“And we’re pretty busing with skating,” says Phichit.

“Well,” Ketty says, her shoulders hunched, clearly disappointed. “At least think about it.”

Later that night, Yuuri decides he will, in fact, think about nothing at all. This is not like skating, where he can replace a wobbly quad Salchow with a familiar triple Axel, or ask his coach when there’s something he doesn’t understand. This is not something he can control, so it’s in his best interest to pretend it’s not happening and wait until it goes away.

It works for a while.

For an entire week, Yuuri is able to focus on school and skating. He attends classes, catches up on his reading, does his homework. He spends his afternoons and some nights at the rink, practicing jumps and spins. He goes to a costume fitting, talks to his coach about music, guest stars in some of Phichit’s vlogs and Instagram posts. He still doesn’t tell anyone about his clear vision, or the goo that comes out of his wrists every so often, or the headaches he’s taking to ignoring. He develops a busy, but manageable routine. It’s nice.

Which is, of course, when everything goes to shit.

It’s Monday. Yuuri got held up by a professor talking to him in the hallway outside the classroom. He was too polite to say anything, so he stood there for thirty minutes listening to her talk about Japanese politics. She wants to hear his opinion on _everything_ , from Princess Mako’s engagement to the critical fall of the yen. In the middle of telling her about the relationship between Japan and South Korea, he feels a headache coming in.

It’s awful, like someone is drilling the back of his neck full force, a constant pulsation of pain and warmth. He grits his teeth and endures five more minutes of conversation before he excuses himself. The pain grows stronger as Yuuri walks outside. He looks around, an impulse telling him to _turn left, turn left_.

He turns right. He’s late for practice already.

The next day, when he arrives on campus, there’s a weird buzz going around. Yuuri doesn’t think much of it; there’s always something going on, a party where somebody drank too much and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, or a game of football lost by many points. It’s not until he’s in line at the cafeteria that he overhears it.

“What,” he says, louder than he intended. 

“Yeah, dude,” says the guy in front of him. “She got hit by a bus in front of the architecture building.”

The architecture building. Which Yuuri would have reached, had he turned left. 

“Is she,” he stops. Takes a deep breathe. “Is she okay?”

“Broke her legs,” the guy shrugs. “Kind of a bummer for her, though. She runs track.”

That night, Yuuri finds Phichit sitting at the kitchen table, laptop open and earphones in.

“I’m gonna do it,” he announces.

Phichit takes his earphones out. “What was that?”

“I said I’m gonna do it.”

“Do what?”

“Save people,” Yuuri sits on the chair opposite Phichit. Then he plants himself facedown on the table. “I’m going to use my spider attributes to save people.”

“What brought about this change of heart, Yuuri?”

_The guilt_ , Yuuri doesn’t say. The overwhelming wave of nausea and discomfort at the thought that people are getting hurt because of him. Granted, he knows, in the rational part of his brain, that it’s not his fault and he doesn’t own anyone anything. But the very loud, anxiety-ridden, bigger part of his brain tells him he could have _done_ something, tells him that every time he ignored a headache someone got hurt, tells him he needs to save people now or he won’t be able to live with himself.

So he shrugs.

“Well, okay,” Yuuri can actually hear Phichit’s frown. “Are you sure?”

Another shrug, because Yuuri is not sure of anything anymore at this point.

“How are we gonna do this, then?”

Yuuri is so touched by the use of _we_ that his eyes actually well up with tears. He raises his head to look at Phichit and, sniffling, says “I have no idea.”

Phichit pats his hand.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.

And the weirdest thing is, they actually do.

First step is to know all the spider atributes Yuuri has. Phichit makes a list and everything. He now can: stick to walls and ceilings through his fingertips and the soles of his feet, but not any other body part; see clearly without his glasses, also see in the dark; sense when people are in danger (does this include himself? Yuuri hopes he never needs to figure it out); he’s hyper-sensitive to noise and smell, just like a dog (he misses Vicchan); jump higher and cover more ground than a normal person; and expel spider silk from the pores of his wrists.

“It’d be more useful if you could make actual webs,” Ketty says one Saturday, while she and Vanessa are helping them.

“Spiders actually have little tubes they use for that,” adds Vanessa.

Phichit goes _oooooh_ and starts typing furiously on his laptop.

Next, they get Yuuri a costume.

“If you’re worried about getting deported, you just have to save people without them knowing it’s you,” Phichit says, shrugging like it’s logical.

“That… actually makes a lot of sense,” Yuuri says.

Phichit has an old costume that he only wore once for a Challenger Series a couple of years ago before he decided to change his short program. It’s a red long-sleeved shirt with a zipper on the back and dark blue pants that only reach Yuuri’s calves.

“Are you sure no one will remember this?” Yuuri asks, uncertain, holding the shirt to his chest.

“I came fifth in that competition,” Phichit grimaces. “I bet there aren’t even any pictures.”

And it’s all they have, anyway.

While Yuuri makes the adjustments needed for the clothes to fit him and sews himself a mask to match (his mother taught him on slow nights after he came home from the rink, the inn still and quiet around them; she used to say _You never know when you’ll need it_ ), Phichit runs around campus freaking out about _something_.

“It’s a project,” is all he says, and comes back home one night with two web-shooters for Yuuri.

They’re two bracelets made of steel, very light, that fit perfectly on Yuuri’s wrists. A trigger rests high on the palm of the hands, and if Yuuri presses down with his middle and ring fingers, the spider silk comes out of the nozzle in a fully-formed web.

Yuuri tries it, aimlessly; the hamster cage is covered in two webs in a millisecond, Phichit’s hamsters running around, scared and shocked, inside it.

“They work!” Phichit laugh-cries, falling on a chair. “I wasn’t sure they would. They’re leftovers from a robotic arm project from last semester, you see. I had to re-do everything by myself and get them out of the lab in secret, so I didn’t even test them.”

He covers a yawn behind his hand. He looks exhausted, hair going in every direction and deep bags under his eyes.

A lump forms in Yuuri’s throat. He has no idea how to express all the words of gratitude and undying love he wants to say, so he settles for a quiet “Thank you, Phichit.”

“What are mechanical engineering students for,” Phichit says, smiling.

Yuuri still feels guilty and overwhelmed with how much Phichit has helped him, so he buys groceries and cooks dinner for one week. He also starts to carry the red and blue costume everywhere he goes, because he answer to the headaches now, mostly during breaks between classes and after practice at the rink. So far he’s saved an old lady from getting hit by a car, a kid from breaking his neck falling down stairs, and more than a few share of cats stuck on trees. 

It’s _exhausting_.

The worst part, though, is after he’s saved people. They just stare at him wide-eyed and open-mouthed and, without fail, ask “Who _are_ you?”

Most times he doesn’t answer, but other times he shrugs, says “Just a guy” and hopes his American accent is convincing enough they think he’s a local and don’t go out of their way to look for Japanese men in the area to report him to the cops.

One night, after a particularly gruesome practice, Yuuri is walking home when the base of his skull starts to throb and hurt. He ducks into an alley and searches for the costume in his bag, quickly changes into it and goes back out on the street.

He sees it right away: across from him, visible through the dirty glass, a 7-Eleven is getting robbed.

Yuuri curses under his breathe in Japanese. There’s a man holding the cashier at gun point. Yuuri should call the police and get out of there, let the professionals deal with it, but the headache builds and builds, the armed man knocks over a rack of magazines and Yuuri just _goes_.

Later he’ll realize his own stupidity and want to punch himself in the face, but now he actually enters the store through the front door and says “Hi”, mind completely blank.

The man points the gun at him. Both he and the cashier do a double take, which Yuuri understands: here is a masked man dressed in red and blue at almost 10PM. It’s probably not the weirdest thing to ever happen at a 7-Eleven in Detroit, but it’s not exactly normal, either.

“What the fuck,” says the man.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Yuuri says, and shoots a web at him.

Except he misses. The web closes around the man’s free hand, not the one pointing the gun.

The man stares at his hand for a second, freaked out, but it soon turns into anger.

“Motherfucker,” he says.

Then he shoots.

It’s like time stands still. Or not exactly still, but Yuuri sees the bullet in slow motion as it leaves the gun and hurls through the air towards him.

He ducks. Slides on the floor, kicks the man’s feet and, as he falls, pins him to the ground with three webs. Kicks the gun away from his hand.

The sound of breaking class gets Yuuri out of his bubble of adrenaline and instinct. An alarm sounds, loud through the whole store. On the floor, the robber struggles and curses.

“Ugh,” Yuuri tells him. “I’m sure you have your reasons, and I’m sorry if your situation is bad, but. You shouldn’t steal.”

“Fuck you!” is all he gets, over and over.

“Dude,” the cashier says. Yuuri raises his head to see the boy staring at him; he’s a high school kid, maybe 16 or 17. “That was _awesome_.”

Yuuri blinks, which is lost on the boy, who can’t see it behind the mask.

“Thank you?”

The boy has his phone out, not calling the police but taking a picture of the robber, who curses at him too.

“Are you a spider, man?” the boy asks, now aiming his camera at Yuuri.

Except Yuuri hears it as _Are you a Spiderman?_ and thinks _Yes, that’s it_. 

“You’re right,” he says. “I’m Spiderman.”

Then he hears police sirens in the distance, maybe still three or four blocks away, but he bolts.

When he finally gets home, Phichit greets him with a laptop screen.

“You’re all over Twitter, Yuuri,” he says, turning down the brightness so Yuuri’s sensitive eyes don’t suffer too much.

He has his browser open on a tweet that says _Y’all spiderman saved my ass tonight_ , followed by two laughing emojis above a blurry picture of Yuuri in his red and blue costume.

“Look at the replies,” Phichit says, so Yuuri does. It’s mostly people wondering _what the fuck_ and _who?!_ , but here and there, someone answers _yo man i’ve seen that nigga too!_ and _lol he’s helped me too_.

“Hm,” is all Yuuri says, too tired and hungry for anything else.

“This is so exciting,” Phichit says, grinning from ear to ear.

From that day on, Phichit and Ketty manage the account @spidersightings. It gains two thousand followers on its first night and people tweet at it nonstop.

Yuuri doesn’t care much for it. He’s busy the entire week. He somehow manages not to miss a single practice, write the papers for Culture and Life in 18th Century America and The Comparative Study of Cultures, and take the exams for Economics in Modern-day Middle East and Introduction to Russian. He does well enough to keep his 3.8 GPA and not lose his scholarship, which is more than he thought he’d be able to do now, with the added weight of late nights and early mornings saving people.

Then it’s time for Skate America.

**Author's Note:**

> como sempre, obg @DuendeJunior que deu a primeira olhada!!!


End file.
